In today's highly mobile society, staying in touch can be difficult. Families, in particular, may have a difficult time staying in touch, particularly if one or both parents have jobs that require extensive travel and time away from home. Frequent travel can be especially difficult for maintaining a good parent-child relationship. At the same time, some new technologies are useful to bring families closer together. For example, increased use of mobile devices enables travelers to stay in touch easily while on the road. While in the past a traveler was forced to locate an available landline phone and then make an expensive long distance telephone call, the modern mobile device user is able to “roam” on foreign networks and to use a mobile device at any time to stay in contact with family and friends.
Modern technology also provides new communication formats to keep in touch, such as video conferencing, electronic mail or e-mail, text messaging (such as Short Message Service or SMS messaging), photo, video and/or audio messaging (such as Multimedia Messaging Service or MMS messaging) using the Internet, a mobile telecommunications network, an IP-based telecommunications network (such as VoIP or UMA/GAN), etc. However, it would be useful to have new ways of taking advantage of these connecting technologies to help people maintain contact with family and friends. Further, such ways of keeping in touch can at times feel impersonal or not as rich, such as if one compared an email exchange to a personal meeting.
The need exists for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as one that provides additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.